Friday's concert by the NSO opened with a performance of Ravel's Pavane pour une infante defunte, dedicated to three past members of the orchestra: Szabolcs Vedres, Helmut Engemann and Arthur Nachstern.
After this tribute to the deceased, the performance proper took place with the first performance of Jane O'Leary's RTE commission From Sea-Grey Shores. This was partly written in Renvyle House, once the "sea-grey" residence of Oliver St John Gogarty, and the programme provides quotations from that author to set the mood: "The incongruous flowed together at last, and the sweet and bitter blended."
The piece is far from being grey but is full of exciting detail, as the sea is when it meets a rocky coast. Written as an "opening piece" it has a preparatory nature and when the strings have, as it were, caught the start of a big tune, everything dissolves in foam.
Pierre Amoyal (violin) brought to Mendelssohn's Concerto in E minor Op 64 an air of adventurous improvisation which added to the excitement of this colourful score.
On his own in the cadenza he seemed to relish the freedom from orchestral ties, ready to hold his own against all challenges, of which there were plenty in the complex textures of the slow movement and in the energetic motion of the finale.
Each moment was delicately etched but underneath it all was that sense of striving for something that might be beyond the capacity of mortal sound. The conductor kept his eye on the sweep of Beethoven's imagination so that each moment contributed to the whole.
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